At present, the forming of three-dimensional shaped workpieces, such as plate-shaped, tube-shaped and bar-shaped workpieces, is realized by various press machines or specialized machine tools with the assistance of specialized dies. The completion of each type of shaped workpieces requires a set or sets of dies. The designing, manufacturing and adjusting of these dies consumes a great amount of manpower, material resource as well as time. Moreover, the traditional forming device for forming three-dimensional shaped workpieces is automated to a low degree, thus its efficiency cannot meet the need of modernized industrial production. In addition, manual forming, which is unsatisfactory with its poor forming quality, low manufacturing efficiency and requirement of intensive labor, is mainly used for forming workpieces which are large in size and small in quantity.
In addition, without specialized dies, the continuous forming devices adopting current technologies can only form workpieces with straight generatrixes, such as various sheets, strips and profiles, while the forming of three-dimensional shaped workpieces is achieved mainly through die forming or manual production. When it is required to form tube-shaped or bar-shaped workpieces, especially those with varying diameters, special techniques such as spinning, roll forging as well as cross-wedge rolling, are usually applied, which have a much high cost and require a long processing period. Moreover, workpieces with different shapes require different dies when using various forming devices, thus urging a long preparation cycle with a lot of manpower, material resource consumed and a low degree of automation, which could not meet the need of modernized production of small quantity.